Prime Minister says vested interests hatching a plot behind the scenes
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said here on Sunday that vested interests were putting “massive pressure” on her government to “admit” that the Islamic State (IS) had played a role in the recent killings and attacks in the country.

She said “a vested quarter is cooking a plot behind the scenes” to taint Bangladesh’s image and create a situation similar to those in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Syria.

At a press conference here on Sunday on returning from a visit to the Netherlands, she, however, did not name any country or groups engaged in the plot.

While she was abroad for three days, a policeman was hacked to death in an attack on a police checkpoint on the outskirts of Dhaka. Last week, a publisher was killed and another critically injured in two daring attacks.

On October 24, a bomb attack on a Shia gathering in Old Dhaka left two dead and scores injured. A police officer was stabbed to death at a checkpoint in the capital just a day before.

A foreigner was killed in Dhaka on September 28 and another in Rangpur on October 3.

SITE, a U.S-based monitoring group, reported that the IS claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, though the government had been denying it repeatedly, saying the terror group had no organisational presence in the country.

“We definitely don’t expect any situation in Bangladesh similar to that in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Libya … We don’t want anybody to use our lands [for terrorism],” the Prime Minister told presspersons.

Ms. Hasina, who leads a political coalition of secular parties, said the external quarter in support of a local vested group (meaning her political opponents, the Jamaat-e-Islami and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party) wanted the government to admit that the IS was present in Bangladesh. “If they succeed, they’ll just prey on us; many have that type of planning,” she said.

She said the recent incidents in Bangladesh were being created “artificially”. “I want to say it clearly that we are seeing who are doing this … Those who have been held for their alleged involvement in such incidents are the members of a particular political party. During their student life, they were involved in Chhatra Shibir, the students’ front of Jamaat-e-Islami, or involved in the BNP.”